your story

danick70

danick70

69 Beep Beep
Silver Member
One of my favorite parts from the book "mind for pool" is writing your story, particularly, how you got in to pool...here's mine:

So...I grew up without seeing my Dad (wwwaaa!!!) much & when I did he'd bring me to the bar & shoot pool; he was really good, he'd beat me one handed when I was 7.

My Mom died when I was 16 & I went to live with Dad. He was the head of a club called "sons of Italy" & I'd go there & watch him shoot pool.
One night, while my Dad was pasted out, I took his keys & drove his el camino to his club at 2AM; I let my self in & played pool till the sun came up. I did this a few times a week for about a year & became obsessed with the game. It took quite a few more years till I was able to beat my Dad regularly.

So... now, I'm 38 & last night I snuck out to this bar that's around the corner from my house & played awesome, Dude's were lining up to challenge me & that's when I thought of my story, it was the same bar my dad would beat me at one handed, over 30 yrs ago.

What's your story?
 
I'm the youngest of 10 kids, so our house was crazy ALL the time. To get away from it all I would go down to the basement where we had a 9' Gold Crown I :D I would play all day til I fell asleep on the couch next to the table. Everyone in the family played, but I'm the only one that took it seriously, and I never had a teacher. The table got sold after the parents split up and I didn't play for about 10 years til TCOM came out and pool rooms were sprouting like weeds.

Not long after one opened up in my neighborhood I was working there and playing every day. I worked in 3 different rooms over the years to learn, find action, and basically get back to being a little kid hitting balls. It's like my way of checking out, and forgetting things for a while. Even though I like action, and tourneys.....my favorite pool time is taking a table in the back, zoning out, and hitting balls for a few hours.

Which is exactly what I'm going to do today!:D
 
danick70 said:
One of my favorite parts from the book "mind for pool" is writing your story, particularly, how you got in to pool...here's mine:

So...I grew up without seeing my Dad (wwwaaa!!!) much & when I did he'd bring me to the bar & shoot pool; he was really good, he'd beat me one handed when I was 7.

My Mom died when I was 16 & I went to live with Dad. He was the head of a club called "sons of Italy" & I'd go there & watch him shoot pool.
One night, while my Dad was pasted out, I took his keys & drove his el camino to his club at 2AM; I let my self in & played pool till the sun came up. I did this a few times a week for about a year & became obsessed with the game. It took quite a few more years till I was able to beat my Dad regularly.

So... now, I'm 38 & last night I snuck out to this bar that's around the corner from my house & played awesome, Dude's were lining up to challenge me & that's when I thought of my story, it was the same bar my dad would beat me at one handed, over 30 yrs ago.

What's your story?
Click to expand...

I told this story here before on a thread about The Color of Money, but I'll tell it again since this a thread directly about the subject of how people got into pool.

My grandpa Frank Boyce owned in pool hall in Stockton, Ca. back in the 60's and early 70's. During this time my dad became the best player in Stockton while he was still a teenager. He was playing against other young players like Kim Davenport, Cole Dickson, and Joe Salazar among others. I came around in 1972, my parents were only 18 and they got married. My dad joined the Army and gave up playing pool. Fast forward to 1987 we were living in the Chicago suburbs and my dad was working for the Santa Fe Railroad. One of his co-workers wives was working as an extra on The Color of Money which was being filmed partially in Chicago. As it turns out his friends wife ended up winning a raffle for a Mc Dermott D-26 cue stick. The guy had heard my dad tell stories about how he used to play pool so he asked my dad if he wanted to buy the stick, which he agreed to buy.
My dad now had a cue for the first time in over 15 years, and within a week of buying his new cue stick decided to look at some pool tables. Next thing you know we had a regulation A.E. Schmidt in our house. The game came back to my dad very quickly and within a couple of months was playing in the local tournaments in the Chicago area gaining respect of many of the top players in the area. That same year my dad's job transferred us back to Barstow, Ca. this was around the time that Hard Times Bellflower opened up. He quickly made a name for himself in Southern California as one of the better players, back when there was a ton of great players in the area.
At the same time this was occuring, the railroad was offeriring a buyout of its employees. My dad was decided he wanted to take the buyout and get open his own pool hall. In 1990 my dad opened Boyce's Billiards in Hesperia, Ca and very soon after that I found myself spending the majority of my time playing pool. My grandfather also opened another pool room at this time in Nevada, which was later taken over by my uncle.
As it turns out, The Color of Money got me into pool, even though I had no idea at the time. Eveybody who took up playing pool at my dads pool hall indirectly got into the game because of that movie. John Schmidt, and cuemaker Kent Davis were two people who started off playing there.
 
my story is simple

I started hitting the bars and drinking as soon as I turned fifteen and got my driver's license. There were pool tables in the low dives that would let fifteen year olds drink hard liquor so I was invited to play a time or two or tried a few games, I forget which. Due to great natural skill and ability, I stunk! I was perhaps the world's worst pool player, not excluding Ray Charles. I am competitive by nature so that led to spending over 3000 hours a year in the pool halls for about the next ten years. After the first 5000 hours or so I didn't stink quite as bad.

Hu


danick70 said:
One of my favorite parts from the book "mind for pool" is writing your story, particularly, how you got in to pool...here's mine:

So...I grew up without seeing my Dad (wwwaaa!!!) much & when I did he'd bring me to the bar & shoot pool; he was really good, he'd beat me one handed when I was 7.

My Mom died when I was 16 & I went to live with Dad. He was the head of a club called "sons of Italy" & I'd go there & watch him shoot pool.
One night, while my Dad was pasted out, I took his keys & drove his el camino to his club at 2AM; I let my self in & played pool till the sun came up. I did this a few times a week for about a year & became obsessed with the game. It took quite a few more years till I was able to beat my Dad regularly.

So... now, I'm 38 & last night I snuck out to this bar that's around the corner from my house & played awesome, Dude's were lining up to challenge me & that's when I thought of my story, it was the same bar my dad would beat me at one handed, over 30 yrs ago.

What's your story?
Click to expand...
 
I first started playing at a Youth Center on an Air Force base in Indiana, near Kokomo, Indiana. Can't remember the name, maybe Grissom AFB. I was about 10 or 11 years old. I got pretty good. I remember practicing my 8 ball break, and I could make the 8, ten times in a row. I would sometimes look at a difficult shot, and think out it for a real long time. I would even sit down in the chair because it took a long time for me to come up with something. I started shooting some really hard shots, what most would consider trick shots. At that time and age, I had know idea what a trick shot was. One day, a little japanese guy shows up, and he is watching me play pool. I say little because I had just gone through a growth spurt. From 4 foot 5 inches to 5 foot 5 inches in one year. I think this guy was about 4 foot 10 inches. He didn't speak any english. He asked me about a few of my shots. So, I set them up and showed him how I did it. Me was mumbling something, and I didn't know what he was saying, but I think he was asking me for permission to write down my shots. I was a kid and didn't really care. So, I say okay. I got busy with all kinds of things in and out of school, and I stopped playing for a very long time. I started back up after high school, but just playing once in a blue moon. When I was about 23, I started playing more on a regular basis. I bought a video, and it has some guy named Yoshikazu Kimura on it. And some of the shots looking oddly familiar. Kind of like Deja Vu. It took me a while to realize it, but I remember that he was the guy I met when I was a kid. Because of my job, I sometimes would have 6 months of no pool. Now, I have gotten it down to 1 month of no pool. I am pretty good, but not as good as I was when I was a kid. I am on business in Japan right now. And I had a chance to meet Naoyuki Oi, #1 Japanese Pro Player. I don't play 9 ball that much. So, he offered to play a race to 3 in 8 ball. I won 1 game, and it was a tough run out. He couldn't make a ball on the break, even though he has a monster break. And interestingly enough, that is the only shot he missed...the break. He beat me 3 to 1. I watched him play 9 ball, and he is really good. He rarely misses a shot, and rarely is unable to get out of safety. I am a bit inspired to take up 9 ball, and to learn the Japanese language. I can't help to think that if I could go back to those days as a kid, and be able to play pool all day long, every day....then I could maybe become good enough to play on a professional level. Right now, I am in a bit of a slump. I don't really know what brought me to the game. I remember when I was a kid, there wasn't anybody around to play, and 8 ball was the only game I knew how to play, and I only knew the basics. I didn't know all the rules. I still enjoy 8 ball more than any other game. I think what I like the most about pool, is that it is like art in motion. A painting by some great artist might be worth millions of dollars, but I think the truly beautiful things in life cannot be captured with anything other than our own minds. I think the most beautiful thing about pool is the spin/motion of the balls.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top